Why Your First Draft Looks Like Nothing

I was watching one of those videos where an artist scratches lines on paper.

A little line here. A little line there. The hand moves with confidence, but the page looks like nothing. Just marks.

A bit of shading here. Some crosshatching there. Still nothing recognizable.

Then — almost suddenly — it starts coming together. An eye emerges. A jawline. A whole face you didn't see coming.

If you'd never seen anything like it before, you'd be shocked. How did that come from those scratches?

Why Beginners Can't See What's Coming

Here's the thing about that artist: they've done this before.

They've seen scratches become portraits a thousand times. So when they're making those early marks, they're not lost. They know — from experience — that this is what becoming looks like.

But if you've never finished a drawing? Those early scratches just look like scratches. There's no mental picture of the finish line because you've never crossed one.

You can't trust a process you've never completed.

That's the hard part of being new to anything creative.

What Writing a Novel Actually Looks Like

I think about this with writing.

If you've never held a finished novel that you wrote, you don't know what the journey feels like. You just know it's supposed to end with a book in your hands.

So you start. A few sentences here. A scene there. You get stuck. You write around the stuck part. You sketch a character background you didn't know you needed. You outline something. Then you throw out the outline and try again.

It feels like scratches on paper. Random marks going nowhere.

Scenes that don't connect. Characters who won't behave. Plot threads you forgot you started.

This is the part where most people quit. Because it doesn't look like a book. It looks like a mess.

The Mess Is the Process

But here's what I'm learning: that mess is exactly what becoming looks like.

The artist's early scratches aren't a sign of failure. They're the foundation. The face is in there — it just hasn't emerged yet.

Same with writing. The book is in those scattered scenes. It's in the false starts and abandoned outlines. It's waiting to be assembled from parts that don't look like anything yet.

You just can't see it because you've never seen it before.

Why Experience Changes Everything

The second time is different.

Once you've finished something — once you've held the completed thing in your hands — you have proof. You know that scratches can become portraits. That scattered scenes can become novels.

The mess stops feeling like failure. It starts feeling like Tuesday.

But getting to that first finish line? That requires a different kind of faith. The kind where you keep making marks even when you can't see what they're becoming.

Permission to Make Marks You Don't Understand

So if you're in the scratches phase right now — if your project looks like random lines that couldn't possibly become anything — I want you to know something:

This is what it looks like.

Not just for you. For everyone. The artist making confident marks on that video? Their first drawings looked like nothing too. They just kept scratching until something emerged.

You don't have to see the portrait yet. You just have to keep making lines.

A scene here. A sentence there. An outline that might get thrown out. A character sketch that might change everything.

Keep scratching.

Try This Today

Make one mark on your creative project without needing to know where it fits.

Write a scene. Sketch an idea. Add something — anything — to the page.

Don't worry about whether it looks like a book yet. It's not supposed to. Not yet.

What scratches are you making today?